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The View from My Kitchen

Benvenuti! I hope you enjoy il panorama dalla mia cucina Italiana -- "the view from my Italian kitchen,"-- where I indulge my passion for Italian food and cooking. From here, I share some thoughts and ideas on food, as well as recipes and restaurant reviews, notes on travel, and a few garnishes from a lifetime in the entertainment industry.

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Grazie mille!

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Americanized Italian Names

How Do You Tell Somebody Their Name is
“Wrong”?

“Hey, buddy! You're saying your name
wrong.” That's not something you hear every day, but if you're
Italian-American it just might be true.

Of course, “wrong” is very
subjective. Whether given at birth or adopted later on, your name is
your name and you are free to spell and/or pronounce it any way you
like. For example, former MLB player
Matt Diaz pronounces his last name “DYE-az.” Never mind that
everybody else says “DEE-az,” which is linguistically correct
since there is no long “i” sound in Spanish. When Matt's
grandfather emigrated from Spain, he wanted to be different. So
“DYE-az” it became. This caused confusion in the press booth and
aggravated Hispanics who considered that Matt was “mispronouncing”
his name, but there it is. Anglicizing/Americanizing ethnic-sounding
surnames is something that happens in all cultures. But when it comes
right down to it, nobody beats the Italians for “mispronouncing”
names.

A popular example
comes from “The Godfather” movies and the Corleone family. Notice
that about half the characters in the movies pronounce the name as
“core-lee-OWN” and the other half say “core-lee-OHN-eh.”
Dropping the final “e” is probably the most common alteration of
a traditional Italian name. Look at singer Joey Fatone. It's not
really “fah-TONE;” it's “fah-TOH-nay.” Same goes for “Iron
Chef” Marc Forgione and his famous father, Larry Forgione. Both men
pronounce their name “for-gee-OWN.” But in Italian, it should be
“for-JYOH-nay.” Names that end in “e-s-e” are also prone to
change. I was watching a documentary that featured Italian-American
mob figure Michael Franzese. And he was pronouncing his name
“fran-SEEZ.” Another Italian guy called him “fran-ZAY-say,”
which, from a linguistic standpoint, is correct. I know an
Italian-American doctor who calls himself “guh-DICE,” but his
name, Giudice, would actually be “JEW-dee-chay” in Italian. So
why do all these sons of Italy – and so many other
Italian-Americans – pronounce their names “wrong”?

For
better or worse, we live in an age of diversity, wherein “different”
is okay. It's okay to look different, it's okay to sound different,
and it's okay to have an unusual or “different” name. But it
wasn't always that way. A hundred years or so ago, anybody
“different” was looked upon with suspicion, if not outright
hostility. You had to look American,
act American, and
sound American in
order to be American.
Anything else and you not only directed suspicion and hostility
toward yourself and your family, you also limited your opportunities.
A recent study showed that immigrants to the United States in the
early years of the 20th
century earned as much as fourteen percent less if they failed to
change their names to something that sounded “American.”

The
entertainment industry is a good example. Many of today's actors,
singers, and entertainers have “foreign” names. Sometimes it even
makes them more popular and “exotic.” But as recently as fifty
years ago, it was still standard practice to change an ethnic name to
something “American” in order to enhance box office or chart
appeal. In fact, a lot of
Italian-American entertainers followed this practice. Sometimes they
made the decision on their own, but most often it was made on the
advice of their agents. Would Dino Paul Crocetti have been as popular
as “Dean Martin?” Would teenagers have gone as crazy over Walden
Robert Cassotto as they did over “Bobby Darin?” Concetta Rosa
Maria Franconero would never have fit on a marquee as well as “Connie
Francis” did. And although Madonna became enormously popular by
using just her first name, I wonder what would have happened if she
had insisted on being “Madonna Louise Ciccone?” Of course,
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta bypassed the issue by calling
herself “Lady Gaga.”

Most Italian
immigrants didn't entirely change their Italian names. Many just
“Americanized” them. Immigrant chef Ettore Boiardi got tired of
Americans mangling his name, so he made it easier for them to
pronounce. He started calling himself Hector Boyardee. You know him
as “Chef Boyardee.”

But
most Italian immigrants didn't become famous. They changed the
spelling or pronunciation of their names for different reasons. In
the early days of immigration to the United States, the mindset of
the immigrant was entirely different from what it later became. They
wanted to distance
themselves as far as possible from their native countries and to
start entirely new lives as Americans. They weren't interested in
being Italian-American or Irish-American or Franco-American or
Mexican-American or any kind of American that involved a hyphen.
They just wanted to be American. In a land where all their neighbors
were called “Smith” or “Jones” or “Johnson” or “Brown,”
traditional Italian names that ended in vowels didn't “sound”
American enough, so they simply dropped the final vowel. Or they
adopted the English language convention of the “silent” vowel,
something that doesn't exist in Italian. Thus, someone whose name
ended in “o-n-e,” instead of pronouncing it “OH-nay” as they
had back in Italy, they now pronounced it “OWN.” It just sounded
less foreign that way.

Many
immigrants didn't effect the change themselves. They had it forced on
them by people who simply couldn't pronounce their names. In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people who worked in
government offices often held their jobs based on their ability to
read and write. But they didn't necessarily have to read or write
well. Refer back to
“The Godfather: Part 2.” Remember the part where the clerk at
Ellis Island processed young Vito Andolini from the town of Corleone
and arbitrarily dubbed him “Vito Corleone?” That happened all the
time. And the enumerators who conducted the US Census were notorious
for spelling names the way they heard them. That's how some of my
Italian forebears went from being “Violi” to being “Vallee.”
And it wasn't always the fault of a government clerk. Oftentimes it
was just the neighbors. My grandparents' parish priest was Father
Sansone. He pronounced it “sahn-SOH-nay,” but many of his rural
American parishioners couldn't get the hang of that and called him
“Father San-SOWN.” He answered to both, but he, himself, always
used and preferred the proper Italian pronunciation. I don't know
why, but Italian names just seem to be beyond many American's
linguistic limits.

Historically,
political climates have also had a lot of influence on the
pronunciation of “foreign” names. During WWI, the British royal
family changed its surname from the decidedly German-sounding
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to a more properly British-sounding “Windsor.”
And when Benito Mussolini was flexing his fascist muscles in Italy in
the years leading up to WWII, Italian-Americans were dropping final
vowels and silencing final “e”s all over the place. Being
identified as an Italian was not a popular thing in an America soon
to be on the outs with Italy.

Much is said about the treatment of
Japanese-Americans during World War II. Often forgotten, however, is
the plight of Italian-Americans during the war years when nearly
600,000 Italian-American citizens were branded as “enemy aliens.”
They were required to register with authorities and carry cards
identifying them as such. They were prohibited from traveling more
than five miles from their homes without permission. They were not
permitted to own firearms, radios, cameras, or even flashlights –
considered to be “signaling devices.” And on the West Coast, they
were subjected to an 8 PM to 6 AM curfew. The FBI arrested around
1,500 Italian-Americans between December 1941 and June 1942. Most
were quickly released, but about 250 spent up to two years in
internment camps.

In odd contrast, an
estimated 1.2 million Italian-Americans served in the U.S. military
during WWII. The only enlisted Marine in U.S. history to win the
nation's two highest military honors -- the Navy Cross and the U.S.
Congressional Medal of Honor – was Italian-American John Basilone,
a U.S. Marine sergeant, who died at the Battle of Iwo Jima.

These wartime
conditions left indelible marks in the Italian-American community.
Signs and flyers were posted directing “enemy aliens” to “speak
American.” As a result, many Italian-Americans stopped speaking
their mother language altogether. Others Americanized their names or
otherwise attempted to distance themselves from their heritage.

Generations
have passed since these early days of immigration and war. Many
modern Italian-Americans don't even realize their names are “wrong”
in the traditional Italian sense. The doctor to whom I referred
earlier had no idea how to pronounce his name in Italian. He said it
the way his parents and his grandparents always said it. It was just
his name. He said it the way he was taught to say it. He didn't know
there was a “proper” pronunciation. (He also didn't know his name
means “judge” in Italian.) That's very common among second,
third, or fourth generation Italian-Americans who know little or
nothing about the native language of their ancestors. And I'm not
inferring that Italian-Americans who maintain their Anglicized names
are less proud of their Italian heritage. That's certainlynot the case in the big
Italian-American enclaves of New York and New Jersey. Those people
may pronounce their names wrong and they may butcher the hell out of
the beautiful Italian language with bastardized words like
“pro-SHOOT” and “moot-sah-RELL” and “ri-GOT,” but when it
comes to ethnic pride, nobody waves the Italian flag higher than they
do.

In the end, though,
I think the reason most Italian-Americans tolerate the
mispronunciations of their names and their language is because they
are, at heart, a very humble, unassuming, and polite people. Unlike
the French, who will beat you about the head and shoulders over the
slightest linguistic transgression, Italians are grateful that you
even attempt to recognize or speak their language and they are much
more inclined to overlook minor flaws and defects in pronunciation.
Unfortunately for those transgressors I encounter, I have French
blood mixed in with the Italian, so I tend to be much less tolerant.
That's why I involuntarily flinch and cringe every time some
restaurant server tries to sell me “broo-SHET-uh” and
“MARE-uh-NARE-uh.” But that's a rant for another time.

Thing is, even
though Italians and Italian-Americans are very humble people, they
don't have to be. They have every right to be proud of their heritage
and shouldn't feel compelled to accept ignorance and disrespect. Even
if America wasn't necessarily “discovered” by an Italian,
Cristoforo Colombo did quite a lot for its ultimate development. The
“new” continents themselves were named for an Italian, Amerigo
Vespucci. Although not an immigrant, few can dispute the impact
Guglielmo Marconi, “the Father of Radio,” had on America and on
the world. Next time you drop by a local branch of your bank, think
of Amadeo Pietro Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, who
instituted the practice of branch banking in the United States. One
Antonio Meucci actually “invented” the telephone; Alexander
Graham Bell just beat him to the patent office. Do you like orange
juice or coffee with your breakfast? Tropicana founder Anthony Rossi
pioneered the pasteurization of orange juice, and while Vince Marotta
didn't actually invent coffee, he did invent “Mr. Coffee.” Do you
own a battery-operated device? You wouldn't if not for the pioneering
work of Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta. The list goes on and on.
Do we even have to mention Dante, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Botticelli
and their contemporaries? No, when it comes to impacting the world,
Italians don't have to stand in line behind anybody.

As I
stated at the outset, your name is your name and it is your
prerogative to say it and spell it any way you see fit. Add a
syllable, drop a letter, or say it backward while standing on one
foot, it's all up to you. If you think of yourself as Italian, just
consider that in the beautiful, lyrical, exquisite language from
which your name is derived, there is most likely a wrong way and a
right way to say it. And, because of social, political, and
historical factors beyond your control, you could be saying it wrong.

Who Am I (and Why Should You Care)?

I've been around long enough to know a little bit about a lot of things. That said, there are a couple of things I know a little bit more about; food and entertainment.

I've been cooking since I was a kid -- a very long time, indeed -- and I've spent most of my adult life in the entertainment industry.

I've been writing about one or the other of these topics since the '80s, and I have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers over the years. I also spent the better part of two decades behind a microphone as the host of my own radio talk show.

Does all of this make me an expert? Nah! But I'm certainly entitled to my opinion -- and so are you! :-)